Hands-On

Cherry Mobile Flare S7 Plus hands-on: A step-up

The company’s greatest contender

Published

October 18, 2018

Daniel Morial

Cherry Mobile recently launched their new Flare S7 series, which is essentially their main smartphone lineup for the year. The greatest offering among the bunch is the Flare S7 Plus, a device with all the specifications and features you’d expect from a 2018 phone.

Since it’s from Cherry Mobile, you’d expect the phone to be cheap, right? Price-wise, it is, but that doesn’t mean it’s just another affordable phone.

Here’s what I got to say about the Flare S7 Plus.

Cherry Mobile has officially joined the notch wagon with a borderless 6.18-inch display. It’s a Full HD+ panel with a 19:9 aspect ratio, and it’s Cherry Mobile’s best display yet.

It’s vibrant and produces vivid colors, but the user interface kind of ruins the beauty of the display. It’s best to download your preferred third-party launcher and customize to your heart’s content.

Unlike with other midrange phones, the Flare S7 Plus’ notch is pretty wide and there’s a reason for it. The phone is equipped with more advanced facial recognition hardware including an IR camera. This ensures higher accuracy, faster unlocking, and even better face detection in low-light.

If you’re not a fan of face unlock, you can always resort to the fingerprint sensor placed on the back of the phone. Based on my usage, the fingerprint reader is faster most of the time than the face unlock. Good thing you have the best of both worlds.

Now that we’re on the back of the phone, let’s talk about another special feature of the Flare S7 Plus. Finally, Cherry Mobile embraces a more elegant design using a glass back and metal frame. I was told that they used Gorilla Glass 3 on both sides, so it won’t scratch easily in your pocket or on the table.

Since we we have a glass back, it’s possible to put in wireless charging and the company did just that. Simply place the phone on any Qi standard wireless charger, and let the magic happen.

It’s not exactly magic per se, but it’s amazing to have your phone charge by placing it on a table. This phone costs less than half of most flagships that don’t even support wireless charging.

Of course, you can always charge this phone’s 3050mAh battery through the reversible USB-C port, which also doubles as the audio port because, sadly, the Flare S7 Plus doesn’t have a 3.5 headphone jack. Cherry Mobile bundles a 3.5mm to USB-C adapter inside the box, so you can still use your legacy headphones as you please.

Powering the Flare S7 Plus is a MediaTek Helio P60 processor. We have already tried the capabilities of this chipset with the OPPO F9, and it definitely delivers great performance. If you’re into benchmarking, you’ll be glad to know the Helio P60 scores higher than its competitors.

The phone also comes with 4GB of memory and 64GB of expandable storage which is pretty standard nowadays. It boots Android 8.1 Oreo out of the box, but there’s no word when Android 9 Pie is coming.

The gaming performance of the Flare S7 Plus is above average, which is what you can expect from the Helio P60. The Mali-G72 MP3 GPU works well with intensive games, but you must reduce the graphics quality a bit to get consistently high frame rates.

As for the cameras, the Flare S7 Plus has capable shooters that are probably the fruit of Cherry Mobile’s investment in improving their R&D when it comes to picture quality. The phone has dual rear shooters using a main 16-megapixel RGB sensor and a secondary 5-megapixel depth sensor. In the front, there’s another 16-megapixel selfie camera that’s paired with the IR sensor when needed. Check out the samples below:

An additional feature of the front sensors is FlareMoji. Using the IR sensor and facial recognition, you can animate cutesy characters. Check this out:

It’s essentially like Apple’s Animoji, but the tracking is nowhere near as smooth as with the iPhone. Anyhow, it’s still enjoyable to use.

Is this your GadgetMatch?

For just PhP 11,999 (US$ 225), the Flare S7 Plus offers a lot. You get a great premium phone with midrange power, beautiful display, and a plethora of extra features like wireless charging and an IR face scanner. The software UI is quite a letdown, but you can always download a launcher from the Play Store.

If you’re wondering what the Flare S7 Plus is in other markets, it’s also called the BLU VIVO XI+ and they share similar specifications and design.

Hands-On

OPPO Reno15 F 5G hands-on

More question marks than exclamation points?

Published

March 6, 2026

Manila Connoisseur

The OPPO Reno15 Series 5G made its way to the Philippines last month, and reception has been pretty great so far.

With a powerful camera package, AI, and a slew of upgrades, there’s a lot to love and not much negative to say. But that’s with both the standard and Pro models.

On the other hand, with the Reno15 F 5G — the series’ supposed budget-friendly “lite” variant —there were more question marks than exclamation points.

I attack this piece once more from a consumer standpoint: shelling out PhP 23,000 to PhP 26,000 for a midrange smartphone that feels and performs like it’s a few notches below its segment doesn’t sound too pleasant.

Performance

With a Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 processor, the OPPO Reno15 F performs pretty much like any sub PhP 20,000 mid-ranger. It’s acceptable, but does not punch above its weight as expected.

No major hiccups for light and casual usage. But performance struggles a lot for demanding video games.

It also heats up significantly just 10 minutes into a title like Honkai: Star Rail. This is a stark contrast to the marketed 25℃ and up to 10 hours straight of smooth gameplay.

Although, the experience was still enjoyable with several wins and MVP runs in Call of Duty Mobile. It only means the F variant remains a more camera-centric phone rather than an a hard-hitting all-arounder.

As with other devices, the 7000mAh battery with 80W SUPERVOOC is a strong suit. You’re fueled from dawn ’til dusk, with much to spare. Recharging takes a breeze, too.

Display

The OPPO Reno15 F has a 6.57-inch 120Hz display, with a 92.8% screen-to-body ratio. At least, that allows you to focus on content on the screen.

Content leans more towards the cooler tone, so you’ll have to adjust it manually if you want a warmer or more vivid look.

The 397ppi pixel density is fine to ensure sharper visuals, while the 1400 nits peak brightness is helpful outdoors.

Camera

The device’s 50MP main camera captures decent quality. The color science leans on being natural anew, without being too dull nor washed out. You can pull off smooth portraits too.

I hardly used the phone for stills as I focused on videos, but here are some samples, on the occasions I was able to take the handset with me:

The 50MP front camera is an intriguing add-on, as it is capable of up to 4K video and a wide 100° field of view.

What this does is it essentially removes the need to flip your phone for the popular “0.5” shots. And the quality doesn’t get compromised given the pixel count.

Here are some selfies from different focal lengths:

To its credit, filming with the back camera at 60fps does look and feel smooth, although it can be improved.

Same with the front camera; and the zoom range can be switched from 0.6 to 2x without cutting the recording.

Although, it’s still best to use a selfie stick or small tripod if you’re just after talking head videos.

Speaking of which, here are a few I’ve made with just this device:

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But for travel and on-the-go captures, as OPPO markets for the series in general, even the Reno15 F can cover a lot of background along with your or your groups’ faces.

Make no mistake, there are some useful AI editing features here. In particular, AI Portrait Glow gives your raw capture an effect to make it look it was taken with flash.

I do not recall the device heating up as well when taking many photos or videos, so you can say it’s more optimized for that task rather than gaming.

Connectivity issues

Meanwhile, AI LinkBoost 3.0, as in the case of the OPPO A6 Pro, doesn’t seem to punch above its weight either.

Once, I also played Mobile Legends: Bang Bang and the session opened to a jittery start despite being on Wi-Fi and having a stable connection. I don’t know what triggered this.

Design, feel

We got the Aurora Blue variant which does kind of resemble the northern lights when you tilt the phone a certain way and when light hits its back panel.

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The cursive “Reno” on the large, protruding camera island gives it more style.

However, it’s all just aesthetics. On the downside, the phone is all sorts of slippery.

I couldn’t hold it properly without think of it slipping away from my hands; nor could I put it on my lap with confidence.

So I guess it’s good that it has structural integrity and waterproofing, because you’ll need that.

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The 6.57-inch body does have a good balance between being too compact and too large, like ultras and pro maxes.

It has a squarish body and has already adapted to the premium, aluminum frame look from the sides.

Is this your GadgetMatch?

Sadly, the OPPO Reno15 F 5G is a Swipe Left unlike its bigger, more capable siblings. There are plenty of plus points for the camera package but take that away, and I don’t see much difference between the Reno15 F and something like the A6 Pro.

Granted, the asking price of this phone will drop significantly in a few months. But throw in a little more, and you’ve got a legitimate mid-ranger that’s more on the premium side rather than the cheap end of the spectrum.